Top 100 List of Blogs That Allows Guest Post

In the recent times, Google has slapped lots of blog networks and websites that were selling paid kind of links or were over optimized. Lots of link building techniques, which were working in the past, may not work any more in present or future. But guest blogging is here to stay for long. Google will never penalize your website for writing a high quality guest post on a blog in your niche.

Reasons for Guest Blogging

We could have lots of reason for choosing guest blogging and some of them are:

• For getting high quality, targeted and niche specific backlinks
• For driving more targeted traffic to our website
• For increasing our website page rank and search engine rankings for targeted pages and targeted search terms
• For Branding purpose
• For building relationship with other bloggers and to connect with their blog readers
• To show your expertise about a specific topic or for improving your overall writing skills

In case you are unaware about SEO benefits of guest blogging, read this guest post by Jonathan. There can be many more solid and logical reasons due to which website owners and bloggers decide to go for guest blogging. Why you have decided to use guest blogging, please share in the comments section.

100 Plus Blogs List That Accept Guest Posts

Here is the ultimate list of popular blogs across different niche’s that accept guest posts. Against each blog, I have mentioned its guest blogging guidelines, contact details, its Alexa Rank and Page Rank. The following list contains blogs in Blogging, SEO, Social Media, Affiliate Marketing, Web Designing, Web Development, Finance, Technology and Health industry that are accepting guest posts.

Blogging & Social Media Marketing Blogs That Accept Guest Posts

1. Blogging Tips – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 16329
Google Page Rank: 5
2. Bloggers Passion – Submit Guest Post – Get in Touch
Alexa Rank: 60990
Google Page Rank: 4
3. Freelance Folder – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 16884
Google Page Rank: 5
4. Blog Godown – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 55117
Google Page Rank: 4
5. GDI Blog – Would You Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 274744
Google Page Rank: 1
6. Million Clues – Guest Blogging – Contact
Alexa Rank: 95321
Google Page Rank: 3
7. Blogsolute – Guest Post – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 43663
Google Page Rank: 4
8. Better Blogging for Bloggers – Open for Guest Bloggers – Contact
Alexa Rank: 354491
Google Page Rank: 3
9. Technogati – Become Our Writer – Contact
Alexa Rank: 209749
Google Page Rank: 3
10. Tricks Daddy – Join Tricks Daddy – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 42306
Google Page Rank: 5
11. John Chow – Write Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 7708
Google Page Rank: 5
12. Quick Online Tips – Guest Blogging Guidelines – Contact
Alexa Rank: 7470
Google Page Rank: 5
13. SmartBloggerz – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 29406
Google Page Rank: 4
14. Daily Seo Tip – Contribute an SEO Tip – Email seosmarty@gmail.com
Alexa Rank: 40364
Google Page Rank: 4
15. ProBlogger – Guest Posts at ProBlogger – Contact
Alexa Rank: 2560
Google Page Rank: 6
16. Mashable – Submit News – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 214
Google Page Rank: 8
17. How To Make My Blog – Write for How To Make My Blog – Contact
Alexa Rank: 36751
Google Page Rank: 6
18. Serradinho Blog – Submit Guest Post – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 118143
Google Page Rank: 3
19. Search Engine People – Submit Your Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 14235
Google Page Rank: 5
20. ReveNews – Write At ReveNews – Contact ReveNews
Alexa Rank: 61783
Google Page Rank: 5
21. Earners Blog – Submit a Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 71219
Google Page Rank: 3
22. Technshare – Write For Us – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 48975
Google Page Rank: 4
23. Search Engine Journal – Write For Us – Email seosmarty@gmail.com
Alexa Rank: 3175
Google Page Rank: 5
24. Famous Bloggers – Submit Your Article – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 8905
Google Page Rank: 4
25. Tips Blogger – Submit Guest Post – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 29175
Google Page Rank: 4
26. Copyblogger – Guest Post Guidelines – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 2782
Google Page Rank: 6
27. YoungPrePro – Submit Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 16044
Google Page Rank: 4
28. WebmasterFormat – Submit Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 105457
Google Page Rank: 4
29. Mrdefinite – Guest Blogging – Contact Me
Alexa Rank: 176675
Google Page Rank: 2
30. TechMaish – Write For Us – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 16508
Google Page Rank: 4
31. Daily Blog Tips – Guest Post Guidelines – Contact
Alexa Rank: 5349
Google Page Rank: 5
32. We Blog Better – Contribute Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 25880
Google Page Rank: 4
33. HelloBloggerz – Submit Guest Posts – Contact
Alexa Rank: 251827
Google Page Rank: 3
34. Basic Blog Tips – Submit Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 16194
Google Page Rank: 4
35. Problogging Success – Submit Guest Post – Contact Jane
Alexa Rank: 18421
Google Page Rank: 3
36. Hot Blog Tips – Guest Posting – Contact
Alexa Rank: 42220
Google Page Rank: 3
37. Azblogtips – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 89513
Google Page Rank: 3
38. Dragon Blogger – Guest Blogging – Contact
Alexa Rank: 34805
Google Page Rank: 0
39. iBlogzone – Be A Guest Blogger – Contact
Alexa Rank: 13200
Google Page Rank: 4
40. The Dot Com Blog – Submit Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 114879
Google Page Rank: 3
41. Blog Success – Apply to Guest Blog – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 73468
Google Page Rank: 4
42. Successful Blog – Guest Post Guidelines – Email: lizsun2@gmail.com
Alexa Rank: 75806
Google Page Rank: 5
43. Social Media Examiner – Want to write – Contact
Alexa Rank: 2111
Google Page Rank: 7
44. Geek Business – Guest Post Guidelines – Contact
Alexa Rank: 534575
Google Page Rank: 5
45. Blog Engage – Guest Blog Here – Contact
Alexa Rank: 7858
Google Page Rank: 4
46. One Woman Marketing – Guest Post Guidelines – Contact
Alexa Rank: 194821
Google Page Rank: 4
47. Kikolani – Guest Post Opportunities – Contact
Alexa Rank: 15904
Google Page Rank: 4
48. Smallbiztrends – Guest Posting Guidelines – Contact
Alexa Rank: 9415
Google Page Rank: 6
49. Pronet Advertising – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 123260
Google Page Rank: 5
50. ShoutMeLoud – Join Shoutmeloud – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 6161
Google Page Rank: 4
51. Small Business Branding – Write For Us – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 180377
Google Page Rank: 5
52. Blogging Junction – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 20326
Google Page Rank: 3
53. BloggingPro – Guest Posting – Contact
Alexa Rank: 20068
Google Page Rank: 4
54. Extreme John – Guest Post – Contact Me
Alexa Rank: 55009
Google Page Rank: 3
55. The3dtechnologies – Guest Poster – Contact
Alexa Rank: 117371
Google Page Rank: 4
56. StayOnSearch – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 28051
Google Page Rank: 4
57. Webtrafficroi – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 34974
Google Page Rank: 4
58. Blogussion – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 45738
Google Page Rank: 5
59. Clickfire – Become a Guest Author – Contact
Alexa Rank: 88769
Google Page Rank: 4
60. TechZoomIn – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 86403
Google Page Rank: 4
61. Wphostingdiscount – Submit Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 362460
Google Page Rank: 2
62. Allbloggingtips – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 41534
Google Page Rank: 3
63. GrowMap – Guest Posting – Contact
Alexa Rank: 26002
Google Page Rank: 4
64. WPKube – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 76325
Google Page Rank: 3
65. Socialh – Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 70401
Google Page Rank: 6
66. Magnet4Marketing – Write a Guest Post – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 43891
Google Page Rank: 3
67. I Need Di$cipline – Guest Post – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 97775
Google Page Rank: 5

Technology Blogs That Accept Guest Posts

1. Technically Personal! – Guest Blogging – Contact
Alexa Rank: 9629
Google Page Rank: 4
2. Techie Buzz – Write For Us Guest Post – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 7574
Google Page Rank: 6
3. Techie Blogger – Write For Techie Blogger – Contact
Alexa Rank: 83204
Google Page Rank: 4
4. Digital Inspiration – Write for Digital Inspiration – Email: amit@labnol.org
Alexa Rank: 2129
Google Page Rank: 6
5. Teck.in – Guest Blogging at TECK.IN – Email: sree@teck.in
Alexa Rank: 20687
Google Page Rank: 3
6. TroubleFixers – Submit Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 26704
Google Page Rank: 4
7. Friedbeef – Would You Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 116425
Google Page Rank: 5
8. Right Now In Tech – Guest Post – Email: antriksh@rightnowintech.com
Alexa Rank: 583185
Google Page Rank: 4
9. Devils’ Workshop – Writing Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 22543
Google Page Rank: 4
10. ReadWriteWeb – Guest Blogging – Contact
Alexa Rank: 2708
Google Page Rank: 7
11. CallingAllGeeks – Write for Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 66413
Google Page Rank: 3
12. The Web Squeeze – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 118687
Google Page Rank: 4
13. Inspirationfeed – Write For Us – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 7771
Google Page Rank: 5
14. The Pragmatic Bookshelf – Write for Us – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 24456
Google Page Rank: 6
15. SitePoint – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 1058
Google Page Rank: 7
16. THE KERNEL – Write For Us – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 71663
Google Page Rank: 5
17. TechWalls – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 61770
Google Page Rank: 3
18. TechTricksWorld – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 29425
Google Page Rank: 3
19. iTechCode – Write For Us – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 25843
Google Page Rank: 3
20. TechAtLast – Guest Posting Guidelines – Contact
Alexa Rank: 18394
Google Page Rank: 3
21. Computer How To Guide – Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 86441
Google Page Rank: 2
22. Comptalks – Guest Bloggers – Contact
Alexa Rank: 47216
Google Page Rank: 4

Web Design & Web Development Blogs That Allows Guest Posts

1. Smashing Share – Contribute Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 79672
Google Page Rank: 6
2. Smashing Magazine – Become An Author – Email: review@smashingmagazine.com
Alexa Rank: 629
Google Page Rank: 7
3. Cats Who Code – Guest Blogging – Contact
Alexa Rank: 8987
Google Page Rank: 5
4. Logo Design Blog – Guest Bloggers Invited – Contact
Alexa Rank: 215780
Google Page Rank: 4
5. Men With Pens – Guest Post Guidelines – Contact
Alexa Rank: 68221
Google Page Rank: 5
6. RegularGeek – Guest Post Guidelines – Email: info@regulargeek.com
Alexa Rank: 265358
Google Page Rank: 4
7. Tripwire Magazine – Write for us! – Contact
Alexa Rank: 2377
Google Page Rank: 5
8. Web And Designers – Write for us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 46964
Google Page Rank: 5
9. Skyje – Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 25804
Google Page Rank: 6
10. Web Design News – Submit An Article – Contact
Alexa Rank: 68309
Google Page Rank: 4

Health Blogs That Allow Guest Blogging

1. Weight Loss Points – Submit Guest POst – Contact
Alexa Rank: 908352
Google Page Rank: 3
2. Hive Health Media – Guest blog posting – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 43159
Google Page Rank: 4
3. For Your Cats Health – Submit Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 606783
Google Page Rank: 2
4. Health on a Budget – Submit Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 391483
Google Page Rank: 3
5. Healthyone – Guest Posting – Contact
Alexa Rank: 163019
Google Page Rank: 3
6. Mayanz – Submit Health Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 269150
Google Page Rank: 2

Finance Blogs that Accept Guest Post

1. Get Rich Slowly – Submit a Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 10573
Google Page Rank: 6
2. Bigger Pockets – Would You Write For Us – Contact
Alexa Rank: 15612
Google Page Rank: 4
3. Top Finance Blog – Guest Posting – Email: finance@topfinanceblog.com
Alexa Rank: 152123
Google Page Rank: 3
4. One Money Design – Guest Post – Contact
Alexa Rank: 139622
Google Page Rank: 3
5. Modest Money – Guest Post Policy – Contact
Alexa Rank: 95671
Google Page Rank: 0
6. Nil2million – Write For Us – Contact Me
Alexa Rank: 121701
Google Page Rank: 3
7. Investopedia – Write For Us – Contact Us
Alexa Rank: 1615
Google Page Rank: 7

How Guest Blogging Should be Done?

Guest blogging is used in all niches, but it seems to be utilized to its full potential in Blogging, SEO, Making Money Online and Social Media Niche’s only. It’s not the case that people from other industries are not using guest blogging at all. Guest blogging has started showing its potential in other big industries like Health, Finance, Travel and Entertainment etc.

Need List of Blogs That Accept Guest Post

To start doing guest posts, you need to have the list of top blogs in your niche that accept guest posts. With this post, I’m aiming at solving this problem of yours by sharing the list of 100 plus blogs with their contact details and popularity (Page Rank and Alexa Rankings) in different niches that accept guest posts.

Approach Guest Blogging Websites

What you have to do is approach owners or concern persons of these blogs with a polite email. You should highlight your intention to write guest posts for them. And in case you have already written guest posts for some popular blogs in your niche, please mention them as well in your email. Once you are finished with sending guest blogging request emails to 8-10 bloggers in your niche, wait for their responses. You should receive positive response from most of blog representative, as they are always hungry for fresh, unique and targeted contents for their blogs. Click here to know how to Build Your Reputation as a Guest Blogger.

Write Excellent Guest Posts

Once you have received 1-2 positive responses against your guest post request, it’s time to show your blogging skills to the rest of world. In case you don’t know how to write excellent guest posts, this is the step-by-step manual you should follow for the same. Once you are finished with writing a targeted guest post as the guest post guidelines, send it over to the concerned person. Now write one more guest post and send it to the next blog owner expecting a guest post from you.

Share and Reply

If blog owners find your guest posts good enough to be published on their blogs, they will share the guest post link or inform you about the time when your guest post will get live on their blog. Once any of your guest post gets live, next thing you should do is share it in your social networks and most importantly reply positively to all comments coming on your guest post. You should subscribe to your guest post comments section to keep track of new comments coming on it.

General Guest Blogging Guidelines

There are some general principles or guidelines you should follow while doing guest blogging. Here is that list:

• You should use your best work as guest post
• Don’t submit the same guest post to multiple blog owners
• Don’t send duplicate or guest post with bad English. You should proofread your guest post before sending
• Follow the guidelines of each blogger to increase the chances of your guest post being accepted on their blog
• Don’t send too many emails to a blog owner for any reason and if you must, you need to be very polite in your approach
• You should include self-promotional links in a guest post as per its blog owner guidelines. Each blog owner has its own style of giving credit to guest bloggers for their work.

Now I’m seeking help from my blog readers. With this special post, I have compiled the list of 100 plus blogs that accept guest post. Do you know any popular blog in any niche that accept guest post, please let me know in the comments section? I will love to see those great blogs in the list mentioned above. I’m aiming at making it as the one stop shop for guest bloggers seeking websites for guest blogging.
Written By: Anil Agarwal Source: BloggersPassion.com

Top 21 Tips to Increase Blog Traffic (Updated 2012) by SEOmoz founder Rand Fishkin

It's easy to build a blog, but hard to build a successful blog with significant traffic. Over the years, we've grown the Moz blog to nearly a million visits each month and helped lots of other blogs, too. I launched a personal blog late last year and was amazed to see how quickly it gained thousands of visits to each post. There's an art to increasing a blog's traffic, and given that we seem to have stumbled on some of that knowledge, I felt it compulsory to give back by sharing what we've observed.
NOTE: This post replaces a popular one I wrote on the same topic in 2007. This post is intended to be useful to all forms of bloggers - independent folks, those seeking to monetize, and marketing professionals working an in-house blog from tiny startups to huge companies. Not all of the tactics will work for everyone, but at least some of these should be applicable and useful.

#1 - Target Your Content to an Audience Likely to Share

When strategizing about who you're writing for, consider that audience's ability to help spread the word. Some readers will naturally be more or less active in evangelizing the work you do, but particular communities, topics, writing styles and content types regularly play better than others on the web. For example, great infographics that strike a chord (like this one), beautiful videos that tell a story (like this one) and remarkable collections of facts that challenge common assumptions (like this one) are all targeted at audiences likely to share (geeks with facial hair, those interested in weight loss and those with political thoughts about macroeconomics respectively).

If you can identify groups that have high concentrations of the blue and orange circles in the diagram above, you dramatically improve the chances of reaching larger audiences and growing your traffic numbers. Targeting blog content at less-share-likely groups may not be a terrible decision (particularly if that's where you passion or your target audience lies), but it will decrease the propensity for your blog's work to spread like wildfire across the web.

#2 - Participate in the Communities Where Your Audience Already Gathers

Advertisers on Madison Avenue have spent billions researching and determining where consumers with various characteristics gather and what they spend their time doing so they can better target their messages. They do it because reaching a group of 65+ year old women with commercials for extreme sports equipment is known to be a waste of money, while reaching an 18-30 year old male demographic that attends rock-climbing gyms is likely to have a much higher ROI.
Thankfully, you don't need to spend a dime to figure out where a large portion of your audience can be found on the web. In fact, you probably already know a few blogs, forums, websites and social media communities where discussions and content are being posted on your topic (and if you don't a Google search will take you much of the way). From that list, you can do some easy expansion using a web-based tool like DoubleClick's Ad Planner:

Once you've determined the communities where your soon-to-be-readers gather, you can start participating. Create an account, read what others have written and don't jump in the conversation until you've got a good feel for what's appropriate and what's not. I've written a post here about rules for comment marketing, and all of them apply. Be a good web citizen and you'll be rewarded with traffic, trust and fans. Link-drop, spam or troll and you'll get a quick boot, or worse, a reputation as a blogger no one wants to associate with.

#3 - Make Your Blog's Content SEO-Friendly

Search engines are a massive opportunity for traffic, yet many bloggers ignore this channel for a variety of reasons that usually have more to do with fear and misunderstanding than true problems. As I've written before, "SEO, when done right, should never interfere with great writing." In 2011, Google received over 3 billion daily searches from around the world, and that number is only growing:

sources: Comscore + Google

Taking advantage of this massive traffic opportunity is of tremendous value to bloggers, who often find that much of the business side of blogging, from inquiries for advertising to guest posting opportunities to press and discovery by major media entities comes via search.
SEO for blogs is both simple and easy to set up, particularly if you're using an SEO-friendly platform like Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla. For more information on how to execute on great SEO for blogs, check out the following resources:

• Blogger's Guide to SEO (from SEOBook)
• The Beginner's Guide to SEO (from Moz)
• Wordpress Blog SEO Tutorial (from Yoast)
• SEO for Travel Bloggers (but applicable to nearly any type of blog - from Moz)

Don't let bad press or poor experiences with spammers (spam is not SEO) taint the amazing power and valuable contributions SEO can make to your blog's traffic and overall success. 20% of the effort and tactics to make your content optimized for search engines will yield 80% of the value possible; embrace it and thousands of visitors seeking exactly what you've posted will be the reward.

#4 - Use Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to Share Your Posts & Find New Connections

Twitter just topped 465 million registered accounts. Facebook has over 850 million active users. Google+ has nearly 100 million. LinkedIn is over 130 million. Together, these networks are attracting vast amounts of time and interest from Internet users around the world, and those that participate on these services fit into the "content distributors" description above, meaning they're likely to help spread the word about your blog.
Leveraging these networks to attract traffic requires patience, study, attention to changes by the social sites and consideration in what content to share and how to do it. My advice is to use the following process:

• If you haven't already, register a personal account and a brand account at each of the following - Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn (those links will take you directly to the registration pages for brand pages). For example, my friend Dharmesh has a personal account for Twitter and a brand account for OnStartups (one of his blog projects). He also maintains brand pages on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
• Fill out each of those profiles to the fullest possible extent - use photos, write compelling descriptions and make each one as useful and credible as possible. Research shows that profiles with more information have a significant correlation with more successful accounts (and there's a lot of common sense here, too, given that spammy profiles frequently feature little to no profile work).
• Connect with users on those sites with whom you already share a personal or professional relationships, and start following industry luminaries, influencers and connectors. Services like FollowerWonk and FindPeopleonPlus can be incredible for this:

• Start sharing content - your own blog posts, those of peers in your industry who've impressed you and anything that you feel has a chance to go "viral" and earn sharing from others.
• Interact with the community - use hash tags, searches and those you follow to find interesting conversations and content and jump in! Social networks are amazing environment for building a brand, familiarizing yourself with a topic and the people around it, and earning the trust of others through high quality, authentic participation and sharing

If you consistently employ a strategy of participation, share great stuff and make a positive, memorable impression on those who see your interactions on these sites, your followers and fans will grow and your ability to drive traffic back to your blog by sharing content will be tremendous. For many bloggers, social media is the single largest source of traffic, particularly in the early months after launch, when SEO is a less consistent driver.

#5 - Install Analytics and Pay Attention to the Results

At the very least, I'd recommend most bloggers install Google Analytics (which is free), and watch to see where visits originate, which sources drive quality traffic and what others might be saying about you and your content when they link over. If you want to get more advanced, check out this post on 18 Steps to Successful Metrics and Marketing.
Here's a screenshot from the analytics of my wife's travel blog, the Everywhereist:

As you can see, there's all sorts of great insights to be gleaned by looking at where visits originate, analyzing how they were earned and trying to repeat the successes, focus on the high quality and high traffic sources and put less effort into marketing paths that may not be effective. In this example, it's pretty clear that Facebook and Twitter are both excellent channels. StumbleUpon sends a lot of traffic, but they don't stay very long (averaging only 36 seconds vs. the general average of 4 minutes!).
Employing analytics is critical to knowing where you're succeeding, and where you have more opportunity. Don't ignore it, or you'll be doomed to never learn from mistakes or execute on potential.

#6 - Add Graphics, Photos and Illustrations (with link-back licensing)

If you're someone who can produce graphics, take photos, illustrate or even just create funny doodles in MS Paint, you should leverage that talent on your blog. By uploading and hosting images (or using a third-party service like Flickr to embed your images with licensing requirements on that site), you create another traffic source for yourself via Image Search, and often massively improve the engagement and enjoyment of your visitors.
When using images, I highly recommend creating a way for others to use them on their own sites legally and with permission, but in such a way that benefits you as the content creator. For example, you could have a consistent notice under your images indicating that re-using is fine, but that those who do should link back to this post. You can also post that as a sidebar link, include it in your terms of use, or note it however you think will get the most adoption.
Some people will use your images without linking back, which sucks. However, you can find them by employing the Image Search function of "similar images," shown below:

Clicking the "similar" link on any given image will show you other images that Google thinks look alike, which can often uncover new sources of traffic. Just reach out and ask if you can get a link, nicely. Much of the time, you'll not only get your link, but make a valuable contact or new friend, too!

#7 - Conduct Keyword Research While Writing Your Posts

Not surprisingly, a big part of showing up in search engines is targeting the terms and phrases your audience are actually typing into a search engine. It's hard to know what these words will be unless you do some research, and luckily, there's a free tool from Google to help called the AdWords Keyword Tool.
Type some words at the top, hit search and AdWords will show you phrases that match the intent and/or terms you've employed. There's lots to play around with here, but watch out in particular for the "match types" options I've highlighted below:

When you choose "exact match" AdWords will show you only the quantity of searches estimated for that precise phrase. If you use broad match, they'll include any search phrases that use related/similar words in a pattern they think could have overlap with your keyword intent (which can get pretty darn broad). "Phrase match" will give you only those phrases that include the word or words in your search - still fairly wide-ranging, but between "exact" and "broad."
When you're writing a blog post, keyword research is best utilized for the title and headline of the post. For example, if I wanted to write a post here on Moz about how to generate good ideas for bloggers, I might craft something that uses the phrase "blog post ideas" or "blogging ideas" near the front of my title and headline, as in "Blog Post Ideas for When You're Truly Stuck," or "Blogging Ideas that Will Help You Clear Writer's Block."
Optimizing a post to target a specific keyword isn't nearly as hard as it sounds. 80% of the value comes from merely using the phrase effectively in the title of the blog post, and writing high quality content about the subject. If you're interested in more, read Perfecting Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization (a slightly older resource, but just as relevant today as when it was written).

#8 - Frequently Reference Your Own Posts and Those of Others

The web was not made for static, text-only content! Readers appreciate links, as do other bloggers, site owners and even search engines. When you reference your own material in-context and in a way that's not manipulative (watch out for over-optimizing by linking to a category, post or page every time a phrase is used - this is almost certainly discounted by search engines and looks terrible to those who want to read your posts), you potentially draw visitors to your other content AND give search engines a nice signal about those previous posts.
Perhaps even more valuable is referencing the content of others. The biblical expression "give and ye shall receive," perfectly applies on the web. Other site owners will often receive Google Alerts or look through their incoming referrers (as I showed above in tip #5) to see who's talking about them and what they're saying. Linking out is a direct line to earning links, social mentions, friendly emails and new relationships with those you reference. In its early days, this tactic was one of the best ways we earned recognition and traffic with the SEOmoz blog and the power continues to this day.

#9 - Participate in Social Sharing Communities Like Reddit + StumbleUpon

The major social networking sites aren't alone in their power to send traffic to a blog. Social community sites like Reddit (which now receives more than 2 billion! with a "B"! views each month), StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Tumblr, Care2 (for nonprofits and causes), GoodReads (books), Ravelry (knitting), Newsvine (news/politics) and many, many more (Wikipedia maintains a decent, though not comprehensive list here).
Each of these sites have different rules, formats and ways of participating and sharing content. As with participation in blog or forum communities described above in tactic #2, you need to add value to these communities to see value back. Simply drive-by spamming or leaving your link won't get you very far, and could even cause a backlash. Instead, learn the ropes, engage authentically and you'll find that fans, links and traffic can develop.
These communities are also excellent sources of inspiration for posts on your blog. By observing what performs well and earns recognition, you can tailor your content to meet those guidelines and reap the rewards in visits and awareness. My top recommendation for most bloggers is to at least check whether there's an appropriate subreddit in which you should be participating. Subreddits and their search function can help with that.

#10 - Guest Blog (and Accept the Guest Posts of Others)

When you're first starting out, it can be tough to convince other bloggers to allow you to post on their sites OR have an audience large enough to inspire others to want to contribute to your site. This is when friends and professional connections are critical. When you don't have a compelling marketing message, leverage your relationships - find the folks who know you, like you and trust you and ask those who have blog to let you take a shot at authoring something, then ask them to return the favor.
Guest blogging is a fantastic way to spread your brand to new folks who've never seen your work before, and it can be useful in earning early links and references back to your site, which will drive direct traffic and help your search rankings (diverse, external links are a key part of how search engines rank sites and pages). Several recommendations for those who engage in guest blogging:

• Find sites that have a relevant audience - it sucks to pour your time into writing a post, only to see it fizzle because the readers weren't interested. Spend a bit more time researching the posts that succeed on your target site, the makeup of the audience, what types of comments they leave and you'll earn a much higher return with each post.
• Don't be discouraged if you ask and get a "no" or a "no response." As your profile grows in your niche, you'll have more opportunities, requests and an easier time getting a "yes," so don't take early rejections too hard and watch out - in many marketing practices, persistence pays, but pestering a blogger to write for them is not one of these (and may get your email address permanently banned from their inbox).
• When pitching your guest post make it as easy as possible for the other party. When requesting to post, have a phenomenal piece of writing all set to publish that's never been shared before and give them the ability to read it. These requests get far more "yes" replies than asking for the chance to write with no evidence of what you'll contribute. At the very least, make an outline and write a title + snippet.
• Likewise, when requesting a contribution, especially from someone with a significant industry profile, asking for a very specific piece of writing is much easier than getting them to write an entire piece from scratch of their own design. You should also present statistics that highlight the value of posting on your site - traffic data, social followers, RSS subscribers, etc. can all be very persuasive to a skeptical writer.

A great tool for frequent guest bloggers is Ann Smarty's MyBlogGuest, which offers the ability to connect writers with those seeking guest contributions (and the reverse).

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ are also great places to find guest blogging opportunities. In particular, check out the profiles of those you're connected with to see if they run blogs of their own that might be a good fit. Google's Blog Search function and Google Reader's Search are also solid tools for discovery.

#11 - Incorporate Great Design Into Your Site

The power of beautiful, usable, professional design can't be overstated. When readers look at a blog, the first thing they judge is how it "feels" from a design and UX perspective. Sites that use default templates or have horrifying, 1990's design will receive less trust, a lower time-on-page, fewer pages per visit and a lower likelihood of being shared. Those that feature stunning design that clearly indicates quality work will experience the reverse - and reap amazing benefits.

These threads - 1, 2, 3 and 4 - feature some remarkable blog designs for inspiration

If you're looking for a designer to help upgrade the quality of your blog, there's a few resources I recommend:

• Dribbble - great for finding high quality professional designers
• Forrst - another excellent design profile community
• Behance - featuring galleries from a wide range of visual professionals
• Sortfolio - an awesome tool to ID designers by region, skill and budget
• 99 Designs - a controversial site that provides designs on spec via contests (I have mixed feelings on this one, but many people find it useful, particularly for budget-conscious projects)

This is one area where budgeting a couple thousand dollars (if you can afford it) or even a few hundred (if you're low on cash) can make a big difference in the traffic, sharing and viral-impact of every post you write.

#12 - Interact on Other Blogs' Comments

As bloggers, we see a lot of comments. Many are spam, only a few add real value, and even fewer are truly fascinating and remarkable. If you can be in this final category consistently, in ways that make a blogger sit up and think "man, I wish that person commented here more often!" you can achieve great things for your own site's visibility through participation in the comments of other blogs.
Combine the tools presented in #10 (particularly Google Reader/Blog Search) and #4 (especially FollowerWonk) for discovery. The feed subscriber counts in Google Reader can be particularly helpful for identifying good blogs for participation. Then apply the principles covered in this post on comment marketing.

Do be conscious of the name you use when commenting and the URL(s) you point back to. Consistency matters, particularly on naming, and linking to internal pages or using a name that's clearly made for keyword-spamming rather than true conversation will kill your efforts before they begin.

#13 - Participate in Q+A Sites

Every day, thousands of people ask questions on the web. Popular services like Yahoo! Answers, Answers.com, Quora, StackExchange, Formspring and more serve those hungry for information whose web searches couldn't track down the responses they needed.
The best strategy I've seen for engaging on Q+A sites isn't to answer every question that comes along, but rather, to strategically provide high value to a Q+A community by engaging in those places where:

• The question quality is high, and responses thus far have been thin
• The question receives high visibility (either by ranking well for search queries, being featured on the site or getting social traffic/referrals). Most of the Q+A sites will show some stats around the traffic of a question
• The question is something you can answer in a way that provides remarkable value to anyone who's curious and drops by

I also find great value in answering a few questions in-depth by producing an actual blog post to tackle them, then linking back. This is also a way I personally find blog post topics - if people are interested in the answer on a Q+A site, chances are good that lots of folks would want to read it on my blog, too!
Just be authentic in your answer, particularly if you're linking. If you'd like to see some examples, I answer a lot of questions at Quora, frequently include relevant links, but am rarely accused of spamming or link dropping because it's clearly about providing relevant value, not just getting a link for SEO (links on most user-contributed sites are "nofollow" anyway, meaning they shouldn't pass search-engine value). There's a dangerous line to walk here, but if you do so with tact and candor, you can earn a great audience from your participation.

#14 - Enable Subscriptions via Feed + Email (and track them!)

If someone drops by your site, has a good experience and thinks "I should come back here and check this out again when they have more posts," chances are pretty high (I'd estimate 90%+) that you'll never see them again. That sucks! It shouldn't be the case, but we have busy lives and the Internet's filled with animated gifs of cats.
In order to pull back some of these would-be fans, I highly recommend creating an RSS feed using Feedburner and putting visible buttons on the sidebar, top or bottom of your blog posts encouraging those who enjoy your content to sign up (either via feed, or via email, both of which are popular options).

If you're using Wordpress, there's some easy plugins for this, too.
Once you've set things up, visit every few weeks and check on your subscribers - are they clicking on posts? If so, which ones? Learning what plays well for those who subscribe to your content can help make you a better blogger, and earn more visits from RSS, too.

#15 - Attend and Host Events

Despite the immense power of the web to connect us all regardless of geography, in-person meetings are still remarkably useful for bloggers seeking to grow their traffic and influence. The people you meet and connect with in real-world settings are far more likely to naturally lead to discussions about your blog and ways you can help each other. This yields guest posts, links, tweets, shares, blogroll inclusion and general business development like nothing else.

I'm a big advocate of Lanyrd, an event directory service that connects with your social networks to see who among your contacts will be at which events in which geographies. This can be phenomenally useful for identifying which meetups, conferences or gatherings are worth attending (and who you can carpool with).
The founder of Lanyrd also contributed this great answer on Quora about other search engines/directories for events (which makes me like them even more).

#16 - Use Your Email Connections (and Signature) to Promote Your Blog

As a blogger, you're likely to be sending a lot of email out to others who use the web and have the power to help spread your work. Make sure you're not ignoring email as a channel, one-to-one though it may be. When given an opportunity in a conversation that's relevant, feel free to bring up your blog, a specific post or a topic you've written about. I find myself using blogging as a way to scalably answer questions - if I receive the same question many times, I'll try to make a blog post that answers it so I can simply link to that in the future.

I also like to use my email signature to promote the content I share online. If I was really sharp, I'd do link tracking using a service like Bit.ly so I could see how many clicks email footers really earn. I suspect it's not high, but it's also not 0.

#17 - Survey Your Readers

Web surveys are easy to run and often produce high engagement and great topics for conversation. If there's a subject or discussion that's particularly contested, or where you suspect showing the distribution of beliefs, usage or opinions can be revealing, check out a tool like SurveyMonkey (they have a small free version) or PollDaddy. Google Docs also offers a survey tool that's totally free, but not yet great in my view.

#18 - Add Value to a Popular Conversation

Numerous niches in the blogosphere have a few "big sites" where key issues arise, get discussed and spawn conversations on other blogs and sites. Getting into the fray can be a great way to present your point-of-view, earn attention from those interested in the discussion and potentially get links and traffic from the industry leaders as part of the process.
You can see me trying this out with Fred Wilson's AVC blog last year (an incredibly popular and well-respected blog in the VC world). Fred wrote a post about Marketing that I disagreed with strongly and publicly and a day later, he wrote a follow-up where he included a graphic I made AND a link to my post.
If you're seeking sources to find these "popular conversations," Alltop, Topsy, Techmeme (in the tech world) and their sister sites MediaGazer, Memeorandum and WeSmirch, as well as PopURLs can all be useful.

#19 - Aggregate the Best of Your Niche

Bloggers, publishers and site owners of every variety in the web world love and hate to be compared and ranked against one another. It incites endless intrigue, discussion, methodology arguments and competitive behavior - but, it's amazing for earning attention. When a blogger publishes a list of "the best X" or "the top X" in their field, most everyone who's ranked highly praises the list, shares it and links to it. Here's an example from the world of marketing itself:

That's a screenshot of the AdAge Power 150, a list that's been maintained for years in the marketing world and receives an endless amount of discussion by those listed (and not listed). For example, why is SEOmoz's Twitter score only a "13" when we have so many more followers, interactions and retweets than many of those with higher scores? Who knows. But I know it's good for AdAge. :-)
Now, obviously, I would encourage anyone building something like this to be as transparent, accurate and authentic as possible. A high quality resource that lists a "best and brightest" in your niche - be they blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, individual posts, people, conferences or whatever else you can think to rank - is an excellent piece of content for earning traffic and becoming a known quantity in your field.
Oh, and once you do produce it - make sure to let those featured know they've been listed. Tweeting at them with a link is a good way to do this, but if you have email addresses, by all means, reach out. It can often be the start of a great relationship!

#20 - Connect Your Web Profiles and Content to Your Blog

Many of you likely have profiles on services like YouTube, Slideshare, Yahoo!, DeviantArt and dozens of other social and Web 1.0 sites. You might be uploading content to Flickr, to Facebook, to Picasa or even something more esoteric like Prezi. Whatever you're producing on the web and wherever you're doing it, tie it back to your blog.
Including your blog's link on your actual profile pages is among the most obvious, but it's also incredibly valuable. On any service where interaction takes place, those interested in who you are and what you have to share will follow those links, and if they lead back to your blog, they become opportunities for capturing a loyal visitor or earning a share (or both!). But don't just do this with profiles - do it with content, too! If you've created a video for YouTube, make your blog's URL appear at the start or end of the video. Include it in the description of the video and on the uploading profile's page. If you're sharing photos on any of the dozens of photo services, use a watermark or even just some text with your domain name so interested users can find you.
If you're having trouble finding and updating all those old profiles (or figuring out where you might want to create/share some new ones), KnowEm is a great tool for discovering your own profiles (by searching for your name or pseudonyms you've used) and claiming profiles on sites you may not yet have participated in.
I'd also strongly recommend leveraging Google's relatively new protocol for rel=author. AJ Kohn wrote a great post on how to set it up here, and Yoast has another good one on building it into Wordpress sites. The benefit for bloggers who do build large enough audiences to gain Google's trust is earning your profile photo next to all the content you author - a powerful markup advantage that likely drives extra clicks from the search results and creates great, memorable branding, too.

#21 - Uncover the Links of Your Fellow Bloggers (and Nab 'em!)

If other blogs in your niche have earned references from sites around the web, there's a decent chance that they'll link to you as well. Conducting competitive link research can also show you what content from your competition has performed well and the strategies they may be using to market their work. To uncover these links, you'll need to use some tools.
OpenSiteExplorer is my favorite, but I'm biased (it's made by Moz). However, it is free to use - if you create a registered account here, you can get unlimited use of the tool showing up to 1,000 links per page or site in perpetuity.

There are other good tools for link research as well, including Blekko, Majestic, Ahrefs and, I've heard that in the near-future, SearchMetrics.
Finding a link is great, but it's through the exhaustive research of looking through dozens or hundreds that you can identify patterns and strategies. You're also likely to find a lot of guest blogging opportunities and other chances for outreach. If you maintain a great persona and brand in your niche, your ability to earn these will rise dramatically.

Bonus #22 - Be Consistent and Don't Give Up

If there's one piece of advice I wish I could share with every blogger, it's this:

The above image comes from Everywhereist's analytics. Geraldine could have given up 18 months into her daily blogging. After all, she was putting in 3-5 hours each day writing content, taking photos, visiting sites, coming up with topics, trying to guest blog and grow her Twitter followers and never doing any SEO (don't ask, it's a running joke between us). And then, almost two years after her blog began, and more than 500 posts in, things finally got going. She got some nice guest blogging gigs, had some posts of hers go "hot" in the social sphere, earned mentions on some bigger sites, then got really big press from Time's Best Blogs of 2011.
I'd guess there's hundreds of new bloggers on the web each day who have all the opportunity Geraldine had, but after months (maybe only weeks) of slogging away, they give up.
When I started the SEOmoz blog in 2004, I had some advantages (mostly a good deal of marketing and SEO knowledge), but it was nearly 2 years before the blog could be called anything like a success. Earning traffic isn't rocket science, but it does take time, perseverance and consistency. Don't give up. Stick to your schedule. Remember that everyone has a few posts that suck, and it's only by writing and publishing those sucky posts that you get into the habit necessary to eventually transform your blog into something remarkable.
Good luck and good blogging from all of us at Moz.
Written By: Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz founder) Source: SEOmoz.org

Important Tips for developing high quality sites

We receive a lot of questions from publishers wanting to know best practices to grow your businesses with AdSense. While there's no one right answer, our advice continues to be to focus on creating high quality content and delivering the best possible user experience on your websites. Here are some key suggestions on how to design and organize your website content with an overall emphasis on the quality of the site.

Don't create multiple pages or sites with duplicate content.

We encourage you to create high quality sites rather than a large quantity of sites. Focusing on one site and making it richer in information and authentic in content not only benefits users, but also helps you win more of them. When users are browsing online, they want to find what they're looking for quickly and easily without combing through endless multiple pages, subdomains, or sites with substantially generic or duplicate content. If you have pages or sites that are similar in content or template design, consider consolidating the pages or sites into one.

 

Provide content that gives users a reason to visit, and return, to your site. 

When you create content on your site, it’s important to ask yourself if the page provides substantial value or service when compared to sites covering similar subjects. It's worth the effort to create original content that sets your site apart from the rest. This will provide useful search results and keep your visitors coming back.
 

Provide the information or service promised. 

Some publishers create sites that appear to offer a product or service, but instead trick users into navigating through several pages and viewing ads. This results in a negative user experience, and causes your site to be perceived as untrustworthy. Use keywords appropriately and in context with your content and make sure users are able to easily navigate through the site to find what products, goods, or services are promised.

There’s no shortcut to success. Building high quality site takes effort and time. However, we’ve seen that publishers who focus on their users instead of using quick and deceptive techniques are the real winners and experience long-term revenue growth and success in our network. For more information, check out Google Webmaster Guidelines and the policy section of the AdSense Help Center.
Written By: Lingjuan Zhang Source: Adsense.Blogspot.in

7 Tips For Big Marketers To Increase Social-Media Marketing ROI

This article is by V. Kumar, Ph.D., Richard and Susan Lenny Distinguished Chair Professor of Marketing and executive director at the Center for Excellence in Brand & Customer Management, and director of the Ph.D. Program, J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University,Atlanta. www.drvkumar.com

Image via CrunchBase

Whether or not to engage in social media marketing is hardly a question in today’s world. Anyone wishing to sell a product, a service, or even an idea would not question the need for engagement.  Social media made Kim Kardashian and destroyed SOPA. It made the uprisings in Egypt possible and the elimination of Occupy Wall Street impossible. It’s no surprise, then, that marketers have recognized the power of social media in connecting with their target customers and creating an engaging brand experience online.

Accordingly, there has been a shift in marketing dollars, with many companies now focusing at least part of their marketing efforts on some aspect of social media. Larger companies in particular, because of their market position and access to resources, are best positioned to reap all the benefits of a well-conceived and well-executed social media marketing campaign.

But  one great question remains.  Instincts aside, is it really possible to measure social media results?  Budgeting is a quantifiable science, however, social media measurement remains the last big question when deciding how to allocate marketing dollars. Companies need not just a social media campaign, but a measurable, optimized social media strategy to support their marketing efforts.

With a mix of creativity and marketing science, we have developed a seven-step framework for big-budget marketers to measure social media return on investment (ROI), and the value of a customer’s word-of-mouth (WOM).  For example, Procter & Gamble is about to launch a new form of laundry detergent and wants to generate buzz for the detergent via social media.  Even this giant among CPG companies needs to put some metrics around its efforts.  By executing the following steps, P&G would not only bring more awareness to the brand, but also be able to measure the ROI and the share of total growth in sales.

1. Monitor the conversation.

If P&G wants to determine the potential for influencing purchase decisions on social-media platforms, they must first monitor the platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to see what potential consumers think and talk about the brand.

2. Identify the “ideal” candidates who can spread your brand message.

P&G would need to figure out what makes their ideal candidates ideal; living in the same geographic location, using the same platform as others, the number of people they are connected to in the network, etc.

3. Identify the influential characteristics that make up an “ideal” candidate.

P&G’s ideal candidates would need to have a high ability to influence their social network. For example, when a message is sent, the receiver should see it and also forward it in addition to posting comments about it.

4. Use the influential characteristics to locate all of the influencers.

P&G would then use the identified characteristics to find similar influencers within their chosen social-media platforms to select potential brand ambassadors.

5. Enlist the identified influencers to spread positive word-of-mouth (WOM)

P&G would develop interactive online content specific to the product that is being launched. This content would be used to promote positive WOM from influencers and allow their messages to be tracked and measured for its influence (for example, creating online games).

6. Use the candidates in a social-media campaign to talk about your brand.

P&G’s social-media campaign would incentivize influencers who would promote the spreading of positive WOM to customers, prospective customers and other potential brand ambassadors.

7. Evaluate the performance of your social-media campaign.

Last, but not the least, P&G would assess the successfulness of the campaign based on their chosen key metrics such as ROI, sales revenue and brand awareness. Our implementation of this framework with an ice-cream retailer—HokeyPokey–has shown that social media can be used to generate a 40% share of the total growth in sales, 83% increase in ROI, and a 49% increase in brand awareness in addition to inducing more positive word-of-mouth.

As social media channels continue to explode, and the urge to exploit them continues along with it, the need to develop measurement tools

Dr. V. Kumar

becomes ever more important. The steps outlined here form the basis for cogent social-media measurement for marketers from P&G to the local coffee house, and everything in between. Social media is certainly here to stay, and finally, so is the ability to effectively assess the performance of a social media marketing campaign.

Source: Forbes.com

Why Do We Need Links & Matter ?

Whenever I'm asked about what I do for a living, I say something like this: "you know those pieces of text that you can click on inside of a webpage, the ones that take you somewhere else? I place those."
Blank stare. Sometimes they respond with, "OK, but why?" That's a damn good question. The "why" behind the existence of links has been a bit more absent than it should be, especially for people who are new to the field.

Why Do Links Matter?

Hyperlinks were the main method of building the Internet and connecting sites through HTML, allowing people and bots to move around and find what they needed. They were like any other citations, methods of getting additional information by going somewhere else.

Contrary to popular belief, Al Gore didn't invent the hyperlink. The term itself was first used in the 1960s, before most of you were born.

In 1998 there was the first on-paper mention of PageRank, just before Larry Page and Sergei Brin actually founded Google. The theory behind PageRank became part of the basis of the Google algorithm, and continues to be so today.

To greatly simplify the concept, PageRank is a popularity contest wherein the pages with the most support (via inbound links) behind them should be viewed as the most important ones. You could increase a page's importance simply by building as many links as possible to it.

As anyone who deals with SEO knows though, it's a lot trickier than that.

Not All Links Are of Equal Importance

A link from the homepage of a powerful site like the BBC will be of a higher quality than a link from the links page of your high school's blog.

If a competitor that ranked above you in the SERPs had 100 more links than you, you couldn't just go grab 101 links and rank above him. Some links are simply more valuable than others, particularly links from authoritative sites (like respected news sites) and links from .edu and .gov domains.
Like every other SEO tactic, this was abused, differing opinions abounded, and everyone tried to nail down the exact science of it.

In 2005, the nofollow link attribute came along and ruined all our fun. No longer could we throw tons of links at sites in order to make them rank. That can still work as you'll see at times, but quick wins with links aren't as plentiful as they were pre-nofollow.

In 2009, PageRank was removed from Google's Webmaster Tools, mainly due to the fact that people didn't really understand that the number they saw wasn't a true representation of their sites's importance (and was updated about as frequently as your grandma's hairstyle.)

Note: there have been some updates to the original PageRank patent, which Bill Slawski covers in detail here.

The PrePageRank World

What did we do before we had that pesky little toolbar indicator? Without that one commonly misunderstood metric to constantly monitor and agonize about, we used rankings and traffic as an indicator of our performance.
We could also rank a site without links, just by keyword stuffing (cramming keywords into my tags and content to the extent that 50 percent of my words were that exact keyword, for example) and cloaking (figuring out how to send search engine spiders to one place where I keyword-stuffed while showing users a nice, pretty page). Those were the good old days when you could get a link on a site and not get cussed out by your client because they wanted all PR 4s and up and you, stupidly, got a link on a new but very relevant and well-trafficked PR 0 site.
We still knew that links were important. They just didn't make us crazy.
Link exchanges were very big. Having a page just devoted to outgoing links was huge. It was a softer, gentler time when link building as we know it today was innocent. The only people that I knew who built links were generalist SEOs, and looking back now, it's easy to see that we did it badly by today's standards.

Actual PageRank

There's a point that gets lost a lot, one that makes it obvious that actual PageRank and visible PageRank are two very different things.

The PageRank that we can see represented in the bar, a number, from a PageRank checker, etc., is updated infrequently and isn't the actual PageRank that Google assigns to your site. The actual PageRank calculation, if shown here, would make all of our heads spin. Let's just say that it's a lot more complicated than a number from 0 to 10.

Toolbar PageRank

This is what you do see (and sometimes confuse with actual PageRank.) Toolbar PageRank is one of many factors in how your site will rank but its importance is way overblown and oversimplified. You will see sites with a Toolbar PageRank of 1 outranking sites with a Toolbar PageRank of 5, due to various other considerations (like social signals, for example.)

PageRank Sculpting and Link Juice

Now here is where things get particularly interesting to me. Pages have their own specific PageRank (both actual and toolbar) and through linking elsewhere, they can send link juice in the same way that they receive it.

If a page has 10 outgoing links on it and none are nofollowed, each page linked to should receive one-tenth of that page's link juice. If five links are nofollowed and five are not, each of those five followed links should receive 20 percent of that page's link juice and the five nofollowed links should receive none of it.

Due to this idea, people began to experiment with manipulation. (Can you imagine SEOs manipulating anything?) We nofollowed certain links that went to other site pages, ones that weren't quite as important as the others but ones that we did link to in the navigation. That seemed OK.

Later, like with almost everything else, it got complicated. I won't bore you with the details here. Suffice it to say it's not a widely recommended practice anymore. Some still do it, some don't, but controlling link juice didn't work as we hoped it would. You'd think we would all learn our lessons but no, no we never do.

So Why Do Links Matter Today?

Oddly enough, they matter for the same reasons that they have always mattered: they send traffic by making connections and yes, they are still a large part of ranking. I don't see that changing any time soon, even though many people (and myself) think that certain other factors like social signals are becoming important.
A good link will send you nice link juice and help to boost your rankings so that you'll get more traffic and hopefully more conversions. A great link will do the same thing but it will send you traffic on its own.

Some links probably do absolutely nothing positive. You can get a link on a high-profile site and no one will ever click on it. You can receive referring traffic from a footer link on the crappiest site you've ever seen. You can get a rankings boost from both of those links. It's like magic.

Then there's the concept of authority. Links from other sites will lend credibility and authority to your site, ideally, through using you as an example. When a site links to you, the anchor text is viewed as an indicator of what your site is about.

Like the rest of this, that is no longer a perfect system. Theoretically, the keywords that a site links to you with should boost your authority for that topic.

If CNN linked to your site with an anchor of "great place to buy a computer" then your site would probably be viewed as an actual great place to buy a computer, and you'd probably rank higher for that phrase than if you'd gotten that link from your mom's local birdwatching site. However, the birdwatching site would still help you rank for a great place to buy a computer, but since it's most likely not as authoritative as CNN, to actually get a noticeable rankings boost, you'd need to get that link and more of the same for it to make a difference.

CNN has authority signals, which engines can take into account: people link to it, they reference it on Twitter and Facebook, they comment on stories, they comment on videos, the traffic is probably truly amazing, and the brand itself is one that most people recognize. One link from a site like that is much, much more powerful than more links from sites that have no social traction or online footprint.

Here is What I Truly Believe

The importance of links may lessen a bit, but it won't go away completely. The web was built on links. You can rank well without them of course (think breaking news stories or blog posts that get loads of attention on the first few days), but depending upon what shows up in a search engine's results is just as bad an idea as depending upon any one route into your site.
Written By: Julie Joyce Source: SearchEngineWatch.com

Latest Google’s Updates March 2012: Anchor Text, Image Search, Navigational Queries Search & More

Google’s latest round of search quality updates is now available, and — at the risk of sounding like a grumpy old SEO — this month’s seems even more difficult to grasp than normal. There are a lot of words in this month’s list of 50 changes, but it appears to me that there’s not really a lot of explanation.

So be it, though. The monthly updates are a welcome thing from Google’s search team, and they’re always good to get discussion and speculation going.

With that in mind, here are a few of the items that stand out to me on first perusal of Google’s blog post.

Anchor Text Tweaks

There are two items on the list that make specific reference to how Google processes anchor text. Here they are, word-for-word from the announcement:

Tweaks to handling of anchor text. [launch codename "PC"] This month we turned off a classifier related to anchor text (the visible text appearing in links). Our experimental data suggested that other methods of anchor processing had greater success, so turning off this component made our scoring cleaner and more robust.

Better interpretation and use of anchor text. We’ve improved systems we use to interpret and use anchor text, and determine how relevant a given anchor might be for a given query and website.

The first mentions a specific classifier (i.e., signal) that’s been turned off; the second mentions a new way (signals?) for determining anchor text relevance.

Your guess is as good as mine re: what exactly that means. Comments are open if you want to speculate or tell us (and other readers) what you’ve noticed lately regarding links and anchor text.

Image Search Changes

There are also a couple items related to image search, and more specifically related to the quality of the pages on which images appear:

More relevant image search results. [launch codename "Lice"] This change tunes signals we use related to landing page quality for images. This makes it more likely that you’ll find highly relevant images, even if those images are on pages that are lower quality.

Improvements to Image Search relevance. [launch codename "sib"] We’ve updated signals to better promote reasonably sized images on high-quality landing pages.

In one case, lower quality pages are rewarded; in the other, “reasonably sized” (I read that as “smaller”) images on better quality pages are rewarded. I think.

Indexing Symbols

Google is no longer ignoring several punctuation marks and symbols. As the owner of a website whose name begins with the @ symbol, I love this one. (It used to be that searches for “@U2″ led to the official site, U2.com, not my independent site.)

Improvements to handling of symbols for indexing. [launch codename "Deep Maroon"] We generally ignore punctuation symbols in queries. Based on analysis of our query stream, we’ve now started to index the following heavily used symbols: “%”, “$”, “\”, “.”, “@”, “#”, and “+”. We’ll continue to index more symbols as usage warrants.

I would think this will also benefit searches for Twitter usernames, for example. And maybe hashtags? Haven’t checked on that. Feel free to ignore me.

Navigational Queries

There are a pair of updates regarding navigational queries:

Improvements to results for navigational queries. [launch codename "IceMan5"] A “navigational query” is a search where it looks like the user is looking to navigate to a particular website, such as [New York Times] or [wikipedia.org]. While these searches may seem straightforward, there are still challenges to serving the best results. For example, what if the user doesn’t actually know the right URL? What if the URL they’re searching for seems to be a parked domain (with no content)? This change improves results for this kind of search.

Better handling of queries with both navigational and local intent. [launch codename "ShieldsUp"] Some queries have both local intent and are very navigational (directed towards a particular website). This change improves the balance of results we show, and helps ensure you’ll find highly relevant navigational results or local results towards the top of the page as appropriate for your query.

On that second one, I did a search for the word “twigs.” When my location was set local to my hometown, Google showed results for a local restaurant named Twigs at the top of the results page. When I changed my location to New York City, it showed an East Village hair salon named Twigs. Results related to actual twigs (branches) were further down the page. If that’s what they’re referring to, this is an interesting change.

Other Changes Worth Reading Closely

Here are a few other things that caught my eye:

More accurate short answers. [project codename "Porky Pig"] We’ve updated the sources behind our short answers feature to rely on data from Freebase. This improves accuracy and makes it easier to fix bugs.

Improvements to freshness. [launch codename "Abacus", project codename "Freshness"] We launched an improvement to freshness late last year that was very helpful, but it cost significant machine resources. At the time we decided to roll out the change only for news-related traffic. This month we rolled it out for all queries.

Better indexing of profile pages. [launch codename "Prof-2"] This change improves the comprehensiveness of public profile pages in our index from more than two-hundred social sites.

There are also several updates related to synonyms and universal search results.

But what stood out to you as you read through the 50 search updates for March? Comments are open.
Written By: Matt McGee Source: SearchEngineLand.com